Operation...
Can you elaborate on the operation of the layout for me please?
Martin, Happy New Year.
The operation is very much linked to the design of the track plan. As the layout is for exhibition not a home, the way it has been designed to operate reflects what I’ve learnt from Haston (my last layout) and the others layouts I’ve exhibited. I’m not saying these are hard and fast rules, but things that I’ve noticed when exhibiting my small layouts.
1. 80% of the British exhibition goers are not interested in American layouts, they just walk right past. That’s fine, each to their own.
2. There is no need to have a great-complicated set of moves planned out with switch lists and like, because 80% of the 20% exhibition goers who do stop and look at the layout only stay for a few minutes. All they want to see is something moving.
So once they have moved away from the layout I can start the move all over again.
3. Of the 20% who do stay and watch longer, 80% will start up a conversation. So if I do have a switch-list to work to, I soon lose where I am if I’m talking to them and I’d rather be talking, with something be moving on the layout, than keep stopping to look down at a list to follow.
Haston was built around these ideas, but it had a couple of operational shortfalls that I wanted to improve on, these being:
• I didn’t like the way the freight cars would appear on the layout. They were pushed on from behind some trees with the loco on the rear. I know it is quite normal practice in the States for a loco to shove a load of cars up a branch line because there is no run round at the end but there was something about it that didn't look right on Haston , but I also don’t like very short run round loops
Towards the end of Haston’s time I just kept the freight cars on the layout and never used the fiddle yard. No one ever said don’t the cars go somewhere…
• Over a nine-month period I operated Haston at eight shows for a total of 17 days, which works out at over 100 hours of switching three sidings. Oh! how I wished to switch a siding facing the other way.
Now, I’ve noticed on a number of forums both in the UK and overseas, there is a growing view, by some so called experts, that all sidings should be facing to the same way because that’s what the real railroad does, you shouldn’t have sidings flying off in all directions, or a siding where you have to pull spotted cars out, so you can server a customer at the far end.
I’ve even heard it said, that the railroad would make up their train with all the cars in the correct order in the yard before they set off, so they can just drop off cars without the need for complicated switch moves down the line so as to not waste time or fuel…(I can understand that's how a railroad manager would like it to happen)
Well (insert a rude word here) …… to that.
These people can not have ever studied Google maps and must live in a perfect world far removed from mine, where cock-ups never happens. And how boring must their railroad be to operate!!!(if they’ve ever built one)
The APU spur is a prime example of real world operation. It has three turnouts, two facing and one tailing.
(so that's blown the first idea out of the water)
The end of the track has three customers served on the one track.
As it says on the web site, if you have to switch out an Emerald car depending on what else is on spot you might have to switch through cars on spot for Weaver, BSI, & CEI!
To make it worse, the only place you have to make a switch to reverse the order of cars is the Katmai spur. If it is occupied or out of service for some reason you would have to run all the way back out to the mainline (over a mile) to line up your cars and then shove them all the way back where they belong.
This is just a one-mile long branch, in one city, in one State. How many places must this type of operation, be duplicated across the United States of America? There is a prototype for everything; people have just got to look for it.
Ok, time to get off my soapbox and back to question in hand.
I wanted the easy of operation, of a fan of siding, (so I didn’t have to think to much) as per Haston
Remove as much as possible, the sight of cars being pushed on to the layout.
Have sidings running to opposite directions.
This is all possible with the track plan for my CTU spur, (which by the way comes from Seville Ave Los Angeles, CA
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=34.00264...src=0&z=19 not Alaska but that’s other story…)
The way I see the layout will operate is, there will be 2-3 boxcars in the yard and possibly one spotted at the warehouse. These will be swapped around between yard and warehouse doors 1 2 and 3. I guest this will take 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
Once I’ve had enough of that, the loco would head off in to the fiddle yard/staging siding and couple up to a hopper car for the seed mill and may be a car for repair at BSI, reappear on the layout and then swap them out with any cars on those spots.
I’ve tried this move a couple of times and it also take between 10 to 15 minutes
Add together waiting for the grade crossing lights to work and the fact that there isn’t all ways someone watching the layout, it could be up to 45 minutes before I start the whole process again.
This also means, stock wise I only need four boxcars, two hoppers and a couple of cars for BSI, if I add a spare for each industry,in total I only 11 cars.
Another thing I’ve leant is, it does become boring running the same stock show after show, so this year instead of buying any more locos for the layout (currently I have a GP38 two GP40’s and I’ve a MP15 on order), I’m going to build up my stock of freight car and take a different set to each show. As I’ve got three shows or 5 days this year I reckon I need 55 new cars….
